


Gone Girl

by padfootfreak14



Category: Jurassic Park - All Media Types, Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padfootfreak14/pseuds/padfootfreak14
Summary: Maybe one where Owen and the reader have a messy break up before the accident. But they stick together through the entire incident but she isn’t happy cause you know, Claire. Anyways the reader gets really hurt (whenever and how I don’t care) but Owen freaks out and when she’s kinda bleeding out he apologizes and asks her to marry him? Whether she makes it or not it’s up to you, but lots of details please 😁 thank you lovely ❤️
Relationships: Owen Grady/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	1. Like I'm Gonna Lose You

There were some distinct benefits to dating someone you worked with, most of which required that you enjoyed spending practically every waking moment with them. For you, spending most waking moments with Owen was what ended up with the two of you dating in the first place. It was a natural transition from being neighbors and coworkers to doing all the same stuff but with some special affection thrown in. Hell, he hadn’t even needed to turn on the charm to get you to go out with him. Your relationship was like partying every day with your best friend until one day it wasn’t anymore.  
You’d spent so much time thinking about how great things were and how you were so sure you could spend the rest of your life with him that you never thought to consider maybe he wasn’t the one after all. Small arguments started turning in to huge fights out of nowhere when before you’d rarely fought with each other about anything. You didn’t like being yelled at so you’d start yelling back. There were times you should’ve been the one to apologize that you never did and it took its toll. Each fight pushed the two of you farther from each other, pulling at the rope that bound you until there was nothing left for it to do but break.  
You hated this, you hated that he didn’t notice how much more he broke you every time he started screaming at you like you were the problem, you hated that nothing you did was ever enough for him anymore. You didn’t know what had happened to turn the man you were absolutely head over heels for into this enormous jack ass but you weren’t sure you really wanted to anymore. You were only one person and you could only take so much of this. You could only take so many times that you tried to help him and find out what was wrong and have him flip it on you like you were infringing on some boundary that hadn’t existed before. If he wouldn’t let you in, wouldn’t let you try to fix everything going wrong then there wasn’t anything else left.  
You didn’t expect him to have noticed when he got back to his place late one night that you’d moved all your things out. Things that had never been necessary to keep there when you lived so close anyway but they made it your shared space. Just little things you’d left there, things that he left with you that sat in a bag that he’d probably never notice. You couldn’t force yourself to let that single thing be the end but it had to be the last chance. So you waited, alone, the removal of everything that reminded you of Owen’s presence made your loneliness that much more painful. Each minute that passed was like time was laughing at you for thinking Owen would even care enough to notice.  
You could hear him pull up, for a split second the weight lifted like it was like it used to be and he’d come over for dinner and you’d fall asleep talking about the girls and in the morning you’d end up waking up late and scrambling to get to the paddock. That would’ve been better, even him just popping his head in the door saying he was just going to have an early night. He did notice the bag you’d left for him, which made him notice that anything of yours that had been left was gone. Maybe another day he might have gotten the hint, might have reacted how you hoped he would’ve. You seemed to have a lot of would haves anymore.  
Owen didn’t knock when he showed up, he never did any other time either but you could hear him coming up the steps. Anything you hoped to see on his face was glaringly absent or overshadowed by irritation and anger. So much for trying to patch back together your relationship, as usual anymore he was in a mood. You might even have taken him yelling at you, telling you how stupid it was to bring back his stuff and take yours. If he should be mad at anything it should be that you were one wrong word away from giving up on your relationship, he should be mad at himself for letting you be the only one who was still trying.  
He didn’t, all he did was shake his head at you, turn right back around and slam the door shut behind him. It was a remarkably quick way to flip you from feeling sorry for yourself and your failing relationship to pissed the hell off. How dare he look at you like that, like you were the issue here and not his complete fucking apathy for taking responsibility for his half of the bullshit?! He didn’t get to look at you like you were just being stupid and dramatic when he was too much of an asshole to even say something to you. He didn’t get to just walk out the door like you were just going to sit there and take it.  
“You’re a fucking bastard Owen!” You screamed, flinging the door back open.  
“And you’re an irritating pain in my fucking ass that doesn’t know when to back the fuck off.”  
“So sorry for giving a damn about our relationship! Maybe I should be more like you and just pretend it isn’t breaking apart piece by fucking piece. I should just yell at you all the time and blame you for everything like you do to me! I should just spend all my spare time making you feel like nothing you ever do is good enough for me. We can switch places and I’ll be the ungrateful asshole treating you like shit for trying to keep our fucking relationship from failing. Or here’s this for backing off, since you obviously couldn’t care less. I’m fucking done! You can have all the space you want because I won’t be in it. I have tried so many times to make this work but obviously it just can’t.”  
All you wanted was for him to come after you, to feel his arms wrap around you so you couldn’t walk away from him. You knew that he wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to run after you and tell you it would work out and everything was going to be fine. As you closed the door behind you and sunk against the wall you could hear the echo of his own door slamming. You regretted everything already, but nothing more than ever going out with Owen in the first place. You should’ve stayed friends, fuck buddies, anything else would have been better than this. Now there was nothing left, no boyfriend, no best friend. Just an entirely broken relationship and what you could only be sure would turn in to a mess at work and a mess having to try and live right there by him.  
Owen hadn’t been having a great time with much lately. Things were crap at the paddock and at home things were even worse. Even a short conversation with you turned in to a massive fight and each fight just started getting worse and worse. He was at his wits end trying to manage everything at work and make the relationship work when all it ever resulted in was another fight. What used to seem like a blessing getting to be with you every day felt suffocating. He couldn’t take five minutes to get his thoughts together without you being right there and in his face about something. He could feel the distance between the two of you growing and he hated it.  
Before all of this there was a time he swore he was going to marry you, the only thing that could’ve been better than spending every day with his fantastic girlfriend would’ve been spending it with his wife. Now he wasn’t sure what had changed so damn much, when you’d gone from being there for him to having to know every single thing whether he wanted to talk about it or not. God forbid he didn’t want to talk about something, that would just be another fight altogether. He needed space, the chance to figure out how to deal with things at the paddock and get the two of you back on track, back the way things should’ve been. He could only do so much of that by staying late at the paddock but it was the only chance he had to be away from you. If he was lucky he’d be able to go home and avoid you for a little bit longer, make a little more head way and figure out a way to tell you that he needed some distance without upsetting you.  
The last thing he needed or wanted to see was to walk in the door and find a bag sitting there. Further inspection had it full of everything he’d left at your place which led him to notice that every single thing you’d ever left at his was gone. It set him off irrationally, it shouldn’t even have felt like that big of a deal but it was one more thing that you were doing to try and force his hand, make him do what you wanted him to do instead of giving him the chance to do what he felt he needed to. No rational conversation, just coming over while he’d stayed late at work and deciding that you should give him back his stuff and take yours. He should have taken the time to calm down before storming his way over to your place, or just not gone at all. Then he’d have completely avoided that stupid fucking argument.  
It just set him off worse to find you sitting there like it was nothing at all. You try to force him to your will and you were just going to sit there like that, like you and your pushy bullshit wasn’t half the reason he was in such a terrible fucking mood all the damn time. You could go fuck yourself for all he cared, it wasn’t even worth telling you off. All he wanted to do was go home and drink until he forgot how idiotic you were being but no. He was the bastard. Well he was a bit, he should’ve kept his mouth shut and he wouldn’t have felt like a colossal jack ass for talking to you like that but where the hell did you get off blaming this on him?! All he wanted was a little bit of space and you had to turn it into a fucking melodrama.  
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, this was exactly why he needed to have figured out how to tell you he needed space. Instead it was just you screaming at him, blaming him for all the problems. It was you turning your back on him. It was him doing the same, turning his back instead of making you stay and listen. It was him slamming his door in anger instead of standing outside of yours all night if he had to. He fucking hated himself. There had to have been more that he could have done, that he should have done. Something that might have kept you from walking out on him, something that would’ve kept this gripping pain in his chest away. He wanted to badly to hate you for doing this to him, for not just giving both of you the time to evaluate the problem and fix it but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even keep himself angry at you.  
You were secretly grateful that instead of being more of an asshole like he could’ve been, Owen chose to essentially ignore you at work and at home. Home was easy enough but work was a constant state of trying to act like it was all okay. Owen wanted to fix this, make you see reason and have his girlfriend back instead of this stranger that wouldn’t even meet his eye. No matter how badly he wanted it, he couldn’t make it happen. He was trapped in thinking that if you would go so far as to proclaim yourself done with him then nothing he could say or do would make that better. He was better off just leaving you alone, maybe if he could make himself do that you wouldn’t leave the paddock too. It killed him to see you there every day, right in front of him but he wasn’t allowed to reach out and hold you like he wanted to. But the thought of never seeing you again was much worse. So he kept his distance as best he could.  
The closest Owen got to acting like how things had been before was Hoskins’ most recent visit. It was instinct for him to keep close to you whenever the InGen idiots were around. He couldn’t ever send you off because it would’ve looked bad for him to send off his containment supervisor whenever the big boss came to visit. Now he’d have had even less of a right to do so, but regardless of no longer having that right he was still going to protect you.  
If Owen’s instinct was to keep you close when a perceived threat like Hoskins was around, it was yours to stay close to him. It had been like that even before the two of you dated, if Hoskins was around you stayed close to Owen, or Barry if Owen wasn’t an option. It almost felt like choosing the lesser of two evils but at least with Owen you knew what you were facing. If you were completely honest, you’d have taken time inside the paddock with the girls loose than being alone with Hoskins. That thought didn’t seem quite so amusing to you anymore.  
Just because you’d ended things didn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that you didn’t still love him. It didn’t mean that you didn’t support him either. The drills today had gone amazing and the girls had listened, it was enough excitement that you couldn’t help but hug him. For just that short moment everything else was forgotten in light of all the long hours and time spent working with these amazing animals and it had finally paid off. That moment of your arms around each other was enough to have both of your hearts pounding in your chests. It was interrupted quickly enough when Owen realized Hoskins was approaching and made sure that you were between him and Barry. You took the first chance you got to walk off with Barry and get as far away as you could.  
Had you just left the paddock all together and taken an early day you’d have saved yourself your first mild heart attack of the day. You’d only gotten as far as the tent when you heard the commotion. Given that commotion usually meant you were going to be needed you’d turned to head back when you noticed Barry jogging down the stairs. When you caught side of the gate lifting you broke in to a run. Neither you nor Barry paid any mind to Hoskins as you bolted through the door, Owen’s name tearing from your lips. If he made it out of that cage you were going to have a serious conversation with him about containment procedures and him being a god damn idiot.  
Harsh though it may be, it was always better to risk someone being eaten then to risk the raptors getting out. That meant the gate stayed closed unless they were contained. By that you didn’t mean open the gate, let the stupid new kid get out then have the gate closed behind you. God the amount of paperwork you were going to have after this was going to kill you. When Owen was safely behind the closed gate you decided it was high time you leave. It was all you could do to get your heart rate back under control after Owen’s little stunt, you certainly weren’t up for dealing with Hoskins anymore. As it was you were on the brink of throwing yourself in to Owen’s arms just to make sure that he was okay.  
Home wasn’t as peaceful as you wanted it to be. You hadn’t been there long before you realized that Owen had the same plan you did. It effectively put a halt to your plan to sit around outside a while. Earlier had been a slip up, you let your excitement get the better of you and the last thing you needed was for Owen to think everything was good again. You stayed inside, writing things down you’d probably need for your reports while it was still fresh in your mind. You were absorbed enough in getting more work done that the sound of knocking at your door almost had you falling out of your chair.  
“Before you slam the door in my face and tell me to get the hell away from you, it’s for work.” You did hand it to him, once your surprise at finding Owen at your door faded that had been your first thought. You would have called bullshit but you could see an unfamiliar vehicle down at his place and he was wearing work clothes again. Last time you’d peeked out the window he’d been changed out of his work clothes and you didn’t think he’d change back again just to get you to not slam the door in his face.  
“This had better be important, I’m trying to get ahead on all the reports I’m going to have to fill out after your little stunt at the paddock, and about why I didn’t override you and authorize containment to use the stun rifles.”  
“We both know you didn’t override me because you knew I was right, and because you care more about the girls than you do anyone or anything on this damn island.”  
“Well I can’t put in a report that I didn’t let them shoot the raptors who were about to eat someone because I like the raptors more than I like stupid people. I thought you said this was about work, so help me god if you’re here to get me to leave shit out of the reports again.”  
“As much as I appreciate that, no. I need a favor. They want me to take a look at the paddock for their new asset, by they I mean Masrani told Claire to get me to do it.”  
“And you want me to go instead?” Fat chance, he couldn’t have gotten you to do that before let alone now. On top of that, he’d be hard pressed to get you to do shit where Claire Dearing was involved.  
“I want you to come with me, you know containment a hell of a lot better than I do.”  
“No way in hell, I’m swamped as it is. I’m not going out to look at shit with you and Claire.”  
“I’ll do the reports for you, every last one. I’ll do them exactly how you want them done.” That enough was surprisingly enough so that you’d agree but he continued before you could stop him. “And I’ll do whatever you want for a week…two weeks!”  
“Enough, before you try to sell me your soul. Give me a minute to change, if I’m going to risk being chased and/or eaten by something I need to be in something”  
“Not so cozy,” You heard him laugh as you turned to grab a change of clothes. Whatever to him, you weren’t going to try and get paperwork done in sweaty work clothes. Flipping him off you stepped into the bathroom to change before grabbing your essentials and following him off to Claire and the waiting car. You were going to come up with some absolutely awful things to do over the next two weeks for getting you involved in this shit when you could’ve been at home instead of literally the most awkward silence you’d ever experienced in your life. It didn’t help that Claire seemed less than thrilled to end up with both of you, at least from your end the feeling was mutual.  
Your first impression was to wonder what in the fresh hell made them thinking making their very own dinosaur was a good idea. T-Rex whatever, Raptors you still questioned the sanity of, all the others were all ranging in degrees of whatever, but making up something new really didn’t seem intelligent. Really shouldn’t have made something new that was part T-Rex, and you wondered how you and Owen were supposed to assess the paddock if you didn’t know what else this Indominus Rex was created with. Clearly they didn’t seem to understand that different animals had different requirements when it came to an enclosure. What worked for the T-Rex wasn’t the same as what worked for raptors or what worked for compys or pachys or the trikes. You really hoped that Owen understood just how insanely he owed you for dealing with this stupidity.  
There weren’t words to describe how much you were going to murder him. When he walked over to where you were staring out one of the glass panels you wanted to smash his face in to it. This sort of thing was exactly why you needed to know what this thing was before you could make an assessment. You didn’t trust the huge scratches up the wall, clearly this thing was massive but you refused to believe that something massive could not only scale the wall but do so completely unseen by the security staff and construction workers.  
You would have it said that you were thoroughly in favor of waiting in the safety of the viewing room until Claire found out where the fuck this thing went. Thermal detectors could very well malfunction, you didn’t trust any of this and you didn’t want to go anywhere near the inside of that paddock until you knew nothing was in there to eat you. Owen had talked you in to a lot of things but he couldn’t get you in to that paddock. If he wanted to go be an idiot you were going to wait outside because you couldn’t watch him do something stupid again today.  
It was just your luck that it happened anyway. You really needed to have some conversations with people about opening paddock gates. While everyone else was scattering you forced yourself to ignore the noise coming from the paddock and dove under the nearest vehicle. If it got out you couldn’t possibly outrun it and the best option at least knowing it was part rex was hide and don’t fucking move. With a spray of gravel Owen was under the work vehicle with you and you let out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. You would’ve kept your face buried in his back to keep from seeing what this things was doing but he forced you back around with him and soaked you both in fuel. As you heard it come closer you hoped the smell of gas was enough to make it think the two of you weren’t edible and focused all your willpower into not screaming. You stayed frozen in place and shaking with one hand clamped over your mouth and the other locked on to Owen’s like your life depended on it.  
Owen had never been more grateful for your quick thinking or that you’d chosen the right vehicle to be underneath. He wouldn’t have been able to forgive himself if he’d convinced you to come out here and you’d been killed. This was bad enough, at least by the way he could feel your face pressed in to his back he knew you hadn’t just watched someone be eaten. When the sounds of the Indominus’ steps disappeared into the distance he finally chanced looking at you he regretted it almost as much as bringing you along in the first place.  
“Hey, you’re okay,” He whispered, taking advantage of the massive vehicle giving enough space that he could hover just above you even if he couldn’t get his hand away from yours. Even if he couldn’t hear the creature he wasn’t sure he was willing to risk making noise that might draw it back. Despite the space, there was no way he was going to calm you down like this. It took careful maneuvering to get both out from underneath but Owen managed to do so and keep you shielded by the vehicle without your grip on his hand changing. “Hey, open your eyes,” He tried again, gently pulling away the hand you’d kept over your mouth.  
You were torn between wanting to get as far away from Owen as possible and wishing that you actually felt safe. The panic and desire for safety won out as you buried your face into his neck and exchanged your grip on his hand for a death grip on his shirt with both hands. The arms he wrapped around you did little as you broke, half screaming and half sobbing against him. He held you in his lap like that, gently rocking you until the fumes from the gasoline overwhelmed you and had you jerking off his lap. He held your disheveled hair away from your face as you threw up, pulling you back against him when you were done.  
“In light of what just happened I’d like to take this opportunity to double the amount of time I’m going to be your personal slave.”  
“We’ll discuss new terms later,” You responded shakily. “Just get us the hell out of here.” You could worry about everything later, when you were far away from this thing. Then you’d go right back to how things were that morning and move on with your life. Now you even got an in your face reminder that nasty break up and all Owen still had your back. Just for a little while you were going to try and enjoy that in whatever way you could.  
“I don’t think Claire is coming back for us, but there were some trucks; we’ll take one of those. You want me to drop you off or are you coming with me?” Like hell Claire would’ve come back for the two of you. Even if she cared enough to she probably figured you were both dead anyway.  
“I can’t say I really want to be alone with this thing on the loose and going back to the paddock means dealing with Hoskins so it looks like you’re stuck with me.” It was easy enough to guess where Owen was planning on going and you wanted answers just as much as he did. Come hell and high water you were going to get your answers, classified or not those assholes in their offices weren’t the ones who were nearly just killed by this thing.  
“I was hoping you’d say that,” He responded, standing both of you up. He was quick to pull you along to the waiting trucks and make sure you didn’t catch sight of the remaining carnage. Owen was glad you’d decided you were coming along, he didn’t want you anywhere else but where he knew you were safe while Indominus was loose. When it was dead he’d maybe be more than willing to let you off on your own but until such time you would have to fight him to get him to leave you alone. Letting you slide in to the seat on the opposite side of the cab from him reminded him just how painfully raw and fresh your breakup still was for him.  
You were just grateful to reach control without having another run in with Indominus. You were sure that the stench of gasoline wouldn’t have worked a second time. You just hoped that Indominus stayed clear of the girls and everything else living on the island. Before you could get back and check on the girls, with the mild hope that they ate Hoskins in the meantime, you and Owen had some hell to raise and you intended to make very clear just how you felt about being left out with this beast and nearly being eaten by it.  
Given that you really didn’t have much reason for staying on the island before since your job was only nominally important and your relationship was done with, you made a point to remind yourself to quit. This was a clusterfuck, these people were all idiots and after what you just watched you couldn’t work for these people anymore. You still felt morally obligated to see this through but after that you were so far done with this god damned place. Sure you’d miss the girls, miss the few friends you had but you’d get over it, the girls weren’t even that attached to you in the first place. Once this was done you’d tell Owen forget about your reports, forget about any period of time being your slave and you’d leave. Or leave after double checking your contract that they couldn’t sue the shit out of you for leaving with no notice after nearly being eaten by an experimental new dinosaur. Nice Y/N was out the window and left by the roadside at this point.  
You were all set to get through this with Owen, stick to him like glue and figure out how to get through this. So of course he had to ruin it, or Claire had to ruin it. Both of them had to ruin it because Claire sent her nephews off for the day with her assistant, who they escaped from and now they were off god knows where in the gyrosphere valley by themselves. Owen, being Owen agreed to help her find them and bring them back. It half served her right, which was more a thought of the mood you were in than anything. Either way all the tension between you and Owen came right back, which may have been largely caused by you making some select nasty comments directed at Claire. You stood by them, this mess wouldn’t be happening if they hadn’t made the dinosaur, hadn’t went after it with non-lethals, if she hadn’t let her nephews whose ages she didn’t know off on their own. She was the perfect person for you to throw some blame on. Owen you at least needed to a point, Claire you didn’t care about one way or the other.  
You had every intention of questioning why Owen had stopped when you were nowhere near where the boys would probably be when you saw it out the front window. It was decidedly rash to jump out of the vehicle, but there was no way you were seeing what you were seeing. Apatosaurus had no natural enemies once they were fully grown just because of their sheer size. Yet here you were kneeling in front of one that had been mangled by what must only have been Indominus. You couldn’t stand here and watch her die, not like this. You chose to stand at the peak of the hill, overlooking most of the valley, and found a more gruesome sight. You heard Claire gasp behind you and bit back a comment about what it took to finally make her realize that these had been living breathing animals and not assets for people’s entertainment. You forced yourself to look away and tried to calm yourself down as you climbed back in to the car.  
While Owen and Claire investigated the shattered gyrosphere, yet another thing that Indominus shouldn’t have been able to do that much damage to, you investigated even more gore in the form of…a beheaded ankylosaur. Just the kind of thing you wanted to be out in the wild with, something that could obliterate a gyrosphere, slaughter a herd of apatosaurus and not only kill but behead an ankylosaur which it should have been able to do. But on the bright side, there wasn’t any blood in or around the gyrosphere so the boys could maybe still be alive if by some miracle they’d escaped Indominus.  
By the time you reached the waterfall, you weren’t up for any more of Claire and her yelling and her stupid office wear. You strode past the massive footprint in the direction of the only thing out here that might offer the boys some shelter. You didn’t stand a chance against this thing anyway so it really didn’t matter if you stuck with them or not, at least this way Claire wasn’t slowing you down and you didn’t have to worry about saying anything else ‘uncalled for’. Just as well when you could hear her yelling for her nephews from here.  
When you reached the old visitors center you could hear movement, thankfully too light to be what you were afraid of. You stepped in to the opening of what looked to be the old jeep bay in time to find the older boy swearing at one of the old park vehicles as it started momentarily then sputtered to a stop. You gave them credit for giving it a try, but the vehicles had been sitting so long that all the old fluids had probably clogged up cylinders and corroded too much for the vehicle to really run. You just hoped that the noise didn’t attract Indominus.  
“Probably the best timing I’ve had all day. We’ve been looking all over the place for you boys.” Both of them jumped at the sound of your voice, having clearly not seen you standing there. At least something good had come from the old buildings never getting torn down. At least from the rumors you’d heard, the money InGen had claimed to sink in to dismantling the old park they’d actually been funneling in to continuing what they started. Regardless of what the truth was, you’d found the boys safe and sound. Now you just had to reunite with Owen and Claire and get the fuck back to the park.  
“Did Aunt Claire send you?” Gray was the younger one if you remembered correctly what little Claire had given you. The poor thing sounded terrified.  
“Send me? No no sweetie, she came out here to find you herself. Got me and someone who could easily have come out and found you by himself to come with her. I went off ahead of them.”  
“Aunt Claire, out here?” Zach sounded more than a little skeptical.  
“I know, totally bizarre but she’s been worried sick about you. I thought she was going to lose it when we found the gyrosphere.” You couldn’t really stand the woman but these were kids. They needed to know that their aunt was out here searching for them and not that she was totally unsuited to do so. “I’m sure they heard the noise and they’ll be here soon but until then how about we take a little more cover just to be safe,” You insisted, ushering them just inside the doorway to the next area. At least this way if Indominus happened to come upon you first you were a bit more concealed. You kept the boys inside and yourself right in the doorway so you could just see if anyone or anything was coming.  
You could’ve cried when the noise you heard rushing through the brush turned out to be Owen and Claire. You just barely managed to catch Owen’s eye when a much heavier footstep sounded much too close for comfort. You darted back in, pulling the boys down as low as you can manage as Owen and Claire took shelter against the nearest jeep. When it sounded like it was moving away you quietly got the boys back to their feet, before you could let Claire know you had her nephews your personal nightmare came crashing through the roof. You gave the boys a shove and ran, hoping the boys didn’t fall behind as you leapt over debris. You were sure that Claire could see them but none of you were going to stop for anything. You didn’t even slow down until Claire was on the phone trying to get ACU out here and that was only because Indominus had gone off in another direction. Apparently it decided that the aviary and the sound of the helicopter were more worth its time.  
“Why the hell would you take off like that?!” Owen demanded in a harsh whisper while Claire was momentarily distracted with being reunited with her nephews. “I had no idea where you went, what if it had found you?”  
“Then it wouldn’t have mattered if I was with the two of you or on my own because none of us could outrun that thing. I don’t see why it really matters, we found the kids, and we did what we came out here to do. ACU is going to smoke this thing and this will all be over. When it is I’m gone anyway.”  
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” You were saved from having to answer by everything going straight to hell again.  
“Oh god. Eject eject eject,” You heard yourself muttering as the helicopter got closer and closer before breaking through the ceiling of the aviary. Your heart sank in to your stomach when you saw the smoke billowing up. “Run for the trees!” You yelled as the sky began filling with the winged dinosaurs. You pulled the boys down in to the brush just as a pteranodon swooped down, narrowly missing the three of you. The first break there was you all took, sprinting through the trees until you reached pavement and scattering workers. Never in your life had you been so thankful to be back inside an enclosed vehicle, short-lived as the safety would be it was still some time to try and catch your breath.  
Despite not being the man eating type, the pteranodons had certainly been quick to attack the park. It was getting messier by the minute, stunned dinosaurs dropping to the pavement as ACU did what it could. While Owen helped ACU, you did your best to provide cover as you tried to get the boys somewhere safer.  
“Whoa.” You heard Zach mutter as you were trying to usher them inside. Like a fool you turned to see what had his attention better than the prospect of safety. God how you wanted to hate Owen at that moment. You’d been stupid to think that he still loved you, it was all just Owen being Owen and protecting you like he would have anyone else. You would have counted it a blessing if the pteranodon had slid just far enough to impale itself in your chest. That couldn’t possibly have hurt more than what you were feeling now. It couldn’t possibly hurt more than Owen pulling you up like nothing happened, pulling you along like it was nothing at all.  
All of this was such hell, you couldn’t even have the time to process one thing before it got worse or something else happened. You’d gone from running from the escaped pterosaurs to piling in to another one of the parks 4x4s to flying down the road back out of the park. Because hey, there weren’t enough dangerous animals on the loose, why not let out four more that could kill anyone they wanted before the person even knew they were there. If it were anything else, if it wasn’t Hoskins trying to mess with the raptors, you would’ve stayed at the park and helped contain the pterosaur situation. But you couldn’t let this happen, you’d spend too long seeing what these raptors could do when they were stuck in their paddock to sit back and let someone turn them loose because they thought they could ever be controlled. You refused to even look at Owen, staring out the windshield as you channeled all of your rage and your pain in to more rage that you could direct at Hoskins and InGen. You were going to kill that son of a bitch yet.  
Your hands were tied, there was no way any of you could stop this from happening but you could stop it from happening twice. You knew Hoskins wanted to weaponized the raptors, use them in war. You also knew this field test was going to fail and people were going to die, you just hoped that Barry and Owen weren’t one of them. Given the lack of fondness the raptors held for you, this was one expedition you were going to sit out, you’d watch from the sidelines and work out your contingency plan. You knew Owen didn’t understand why you were willingly going back to control with Hoskins, but if he survived this he would understand then.  
As expected, Hoskins was recording his field test. He didn’t know that you were too, if it failed he’d take his recording and hide it away so no one knew. He’d probably blame it on the park, on Masrani, on Claire or on Owen. Funny thing about technology though, it could really bite you in the ass. By the end of this you were sure you’d have more than enough to destroy Hoskins and make sure that no one ever tried to use any of these animals for their own purposes. You would hold on to your files, keep InGen from realizing that you had them. Just as expected, it only took as long as finding Indominus for things to take a turn for the worse.  
It was always stomach churning enough when a drill would fail and pigs would end up dead, but seeing a first person…first raptor view of that same thing happening to human beings took all you had not to be sick, even Hoskins turned away from the screens but you got the distinct feeling it was for another reason altogether. You weren’t sure what happened that Charlie’s camera suddenly went dark but you didn’t think it was anything good. But Barry and Owen were still alive and that was enough for you. Lowery confirmed to you that Claire, Owen and the boys were on their way back to control. As expected, InGen was hauling ass to get out of there and taking all their equipment and records of the failed test with them. They didn’t seem to have any idea that they were missing just enough to bury them with. You stayed back with Lowery, how convenient that suddenly ships were there to take everyone away. You made copies of the files, keeping a set for yourself, giving one to Lowery and one you meant to entrust to Owen. You would make them regret this.  
You ran to meet up with the others, stopping in the empty hall when you realized that even the labs had been evacuated. All of the incubating eggs were gone, the computers shut down. All that was left was the room full of ambers. You had only beaten the others to the hall by a few seconds and followed them in to the back room. When Hoskins stepped in to view you stayed partially shielded by Owen, finagling your phone to set up another recording. If you cared enough to this gave you more than enough to blame Hoskins, Wu and InGen. Hell you could probably save the park, at the very least keep the blame off people who didn’t deserve it. But that required getting to safety and/or off the island which got exponentially more difficult with the appearance of raptors. As much as you got a sick enjoyment of seeing Delta taking down Hoskins, you knew her sisters wouldn’t be far behind.  
Ironically enough, you’d always taken in to consideration that working at the raptor paddock brought a strong possibility that one day they’d kill you. This was fitting enough, having the pack close in around you. You didn’t want it to end like this, those boys were so young, Claire was finally acting like a real caring human being, and Owen had been making so much progress with the girls. In an ideal world you’d have spent the night popping open something expensive to celebrate the morning’s success with Owen and Barry instead of spending it staring in to certain death. Maybe if you hadn’t let Claire and the boys come to the paddock, just sent them to control anyway and they’d have been saved from this. You and Owen had always accepted this as a possible eventuality but they shouldn’t have to face this. A voice in the back of your mind reminded that you shouldn’t have to either.  
Each second that passed you waited for a strike that never came, but no amount of Owen keeping Blue from killing you all could save you from this. You let out a little yelp when Blue was thrown in to the wall and took a step closer to Owen. When the chance came to run you took it, diving in to the first available hiding place and nearly incinerating yourself in the process. You swore, turning whatever dials you could see to shut off the grill tops before you risked peering over them. You felt like a coward for leaving Owen out there alone with nothing more than a rifle to help him. Even that did nothing to even phase the Indominus. You could see the top of Claire’s head across the way too, at the moment safely inside of a souvenir stand. Why in the fuck was she running away from safety?! You didn’t have time to think, diving away just in time to avoid Echo as she came flying through, rolling over the grill you’d just gotten shut off and landing disoriented a few feet from you. You bolted from the restaurant, diving in to the stand with Owen while Indominus was still distracted by Delta.  
It was probably the stupidest idea you had all day, fleeing in fear from Echo and placing yourself right in the sights of Indominus who was without a doubt planning to eat all of you. Meanwhile Claire was nowhere to be seen and those claws were getting dangerously close. Close enough that when they caught on the strap to Gray’s pack they also came across your leg. As you all ran from the stand, you mistook the pain for you weren’t even sure what, but not this. Not searing pain that had you stumbling over yourself while everyone else tried to escape the fight. Owen turned back to make sure you were still there and found you leaning against a wall as you looked at your leg.  
As Owen turned, ready to grab your arm and make sure you stayed with him this time, Owen felt the air leave his lungs and his blood froze. Yelling to Claire to keep going he ran for you, reaching you as you were sliding down against the wall. He kept trying to force himself in to thinking that it was just a scratch. You were just tired, you just need him to help you and it would be fine. Everything would be fine and he’d spend two months doing your paperwork and waiting on you hand and foot. You were fine, it was just a scratch, it was just a scratch. But he knew better, he knew before he got anywhere near you that it wasn’t just a scratch. You wouldn’t stop for a scratch, you wouldn’t stop because you were tired, you wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop himself from panicking.  
His entire body felt like pins and needles, like someone had a grip going right through his chest to take hold of his heart and keep twisting it until the pain radiated through his entire body like a raw throbbing wound. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself you would be okay he couldn’t believe it. All his thoughts were focused on how completely asinine this was. Of course you weren’t hurt, he was going to take you home and make up for being a shitty boyfriend. He had the last few months to make up for, he was going to keep at it until you took him back. Then he’d never waste another fucking second. He’d never hesitate to tell you how much he loved you or wrap his arms around you no matter who the hell was watching. He’d never take you for granted again. There was never going to be enough time with you, and you could never know when it might end but it couldn’t be now. It couldn’t be right here, he couldn’t lose you to something so fucking stupid, something that wouldn’t have happened if he’d have just gone with Claire by himself and left you alone to do your paperwork. His gut said otherwise, it screamed at him that he was going to lose you right here. He was going to lose you with your eyes clenched shut and your hands desperately trying to keep the blood in your body.  
“I should’ve taken my chances with Echo,” You rasped, your breath ragged. For no reason other than perhaps irony your mind flashed back to the aviary. I’m gone anyway. God you never meant like this, but it didn’t matter how you meant it now. It didn’t matter that Owen had replaced your hands with his own and a bunch of stupid souvenir t-shirts that only acted to absorb the blood flowing from your leg.  
“Are you kidding, Echo hates you. She’d have eaten you,” Owen tried to joke, working as nothing but another failed attempt to keep his emotions at bay. They were making his entire body ache in a way nothing he’d ever been through could do. He released pressure on your leg just long enough to take his belt off and use it as a tourniquet. “You’re okay,” He tried after you let out a weak groan when he put pressure back on the wad of shirts. With one hand he reached for you, lifting your head.  
“That’s not true and you know it,” You muttered, opening your eyes to meet his. That alone told you that he knew that you weren’t half as okay as either of you would have been comfortable with. Maybe if there was any chance for real medical care in the very near future, but certainly not trapped by the fighting Rexes. You wanted to tell him to leave, to get himself to safety, but you didn’t want to die alone either. It had always been one of your greatest fears, ever since you were young, being that person that died completely alone.  
“I don’t know that and neither do you,” He insisted, dragging you far enough inside that he didn’t have to worry about dinosaurs on top of trying to save you. Thank god for the near endless supply of souvenir apparel, at least he could add another layer of shirts and use the scarves to secure the makeshift bandages, a box worked well enough to try and elevate the leg as he forced you to lie down. If he could keep you calm and keep the bleeding under control, maybe it would buy some time, maybe it would be enough.  
“I know enough to know that it isn’t looking too great for me right now,” You were sure he wanted to hear you say that you felt fine and it was going to be okay and just as soon as you both could get past the dinosaurs you’d be on your way to a hospital. But you couldn’t lie to him, you couldn’t look him in the eye and say that to him. Instead you reached down into your pocket, pulling out your phone and the second flash drive. “If.” You paused, having to force yourself to vocalize the very real likeliness that you weren’t going to live through this. “If I don’t make it I want you to promise me that you’ll get off this island. Use the files and burn InGen to the ground if that’s what it takes, there should be more than enough.”  
“I don’t give a damn about InGen Y/N!”  
“Please. I can’t let them try to pin this on the park or anyone else. I need to know that if I can’t do it myself someone else will.” Owen looked less than thrilled at the prospected, but took both items and shoved them away in his pocket.  
“Don’t you dare give up on me.” He warned, keeping the hand that held your phone laced in his as he made his lap in to your pillow.  
“I don’t plan on it.” It probably would be easier, just give up and let death take you. You weren’t sure it really worked like you deciding that you were up for dying and suddenly it was over but that wasn’t you. You didn’t want to die on the ground surrounded by shitty souvenirs, listening to dinosaurs trying to kill each other and wishing you knew what you should say. You didn’t want to die at all, let alone lying with your head in Owen’s lap, you didn’t want to die right in front of him like this. If you wanted to get off this island, if you wanted and chance at all you had to fight for it. You’d been fighting all day, even when it seemed more hopeless than this you had still fought. You just had to keep fighting, keep your focus on Owen. Ignore the pain, ignore everything else, keep your eyes open and focus on him. Pretend it was like lying out with him on a nice summer night.  
“I’m sorry I was a shitty boyfriend, you deserved better than that. I was so focused on what I thought I needed to do to fix us that I never thought what you needed. I didn’t even think to talk to you about it and even get on the same page with you.” No time like the present to apologize, not when he felt your full attention on him. The way you were lying there reminded him of the night he’d asked you out. He’d thought you were enjoying the stars above the island and when he looked down you were just staring up at him. He’d sworn to himself in that moment he was going to spend the rest of his life with you.  
“You weren’t the only one that messed things up, we both needed to work on talking to each other and we didn’t. We just fought each other all the time and said things that we didn’t mean just to try and come out on top and we both just became awful to each other. So I’m sorry for being a shitty girlfriend and being so pushy. And for saying you didn’t care. I know you did, I know you still do. I tried to just brush it off as you being your typically protective of everything self but I know better.” God it hurt so much to fucking breathe. You hated having to keep still but even a slight shift made everything hurt worse. “You weren’t shitty, you didn’t even make me want to push you into the paddock until those last few weeks.”  
“You were an amazing girlfriend, even when you irritated the hell out of me. I always thought we’d find a way to fix things, surprised the shit out of me when you told me to go to hell. Didn’t think there was anything left for me to fix, figured if I gave you what you wanted maybe you wouldn’t leave and I’d at least still get to see you. I fucked up, I shouldn’t have brought you out but I fucking missed you so god damn much.” Owen could feel that thin veneer of calm slipping away from him. “Because what the fuck could it have hurt. We’d do a quick job together and you’d remember how great it was being us instead of just me or you and everything would go back how it was supposed to be.”  
“I remembered it every day I came to work. Just because I gave up didn’t mean I forgot everything about us. Today made me think that maybe there was still something left to fix, that it wouldn’t have to be us ignoring each other forever. Every time I thought I’d have the chance to try and say something to you something else came up. Then it got so bad I figured there was no way the park would stay open so I’d just say it later when we were both jobless and wondering what the hell was next. I want us back Owen, even if it means coming back and working here again. I just want us back.” The way he held on to your hand was comforting, but it was getting harder to keep your focus, harder to keep your eyes open. It was taking more effort to draw in air and you weren’t sure if it really had gotten quiet or you were just that out of it.  
“Marry me.” The words came out of his mouth before he even thought about them. If you wanted him back then he was whole heartedly on board. He still had that ring back at the bungalow, tucked away where he’d hidden it those months ago so that you wouldn’t find it before he could ask you. He of course couldn’t go get it right now, but if they planned to reopen the park he could go get it then. If not, he’d figure something else out.  
“Owen, I…”  
“You hate anything that feels like it’s just for the sake of it, I know. I’ve had the ring since before we ever started fighting. I kept putting it off thinking there was a better time or a more perfect moment and then we were at each other’s throats and I lost my chance. You said yourself you want us back, I don’t care what we do just as long as you’re there with me. I’m not wasting any more time, I’m not waiting until the sunset is just right and you’re in the perfect mood. I’m asking you to marry me right now in this dinosaur filled hell.”  
Tears threatened to spill from your eyes as you opened your mouth to respond, to tell him that of course you would marry him. The words wouldn’t come out. You felt faint, everything felt heavy as you felt your eyelids fluttering, fighting against your attempts to keep them open. You felt like you couldn’t breathe as the edges of your vision started to blur and blacken.  
“Hey, keep your eyes open,” Owen urged softly, panic threatening to spring forward as he tried shaking your shoulder. “Baby that’s not funny, open your eyes. Open your eyes!” He was careful when he slid out from under your head to lean over you. “Wake up!” He scream echoed in the silence that had fallen over the park. “Y/N!” He didn’t register the footsteps approaching. He needed you to wake up, you said you weren’t going to give up but you did. You wouldn’t wake up. You didn’t even move when the help that Claire had brought back loaded you on to a stretcher. The strangled cries of your name coming from him were falling on ears that couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t make his limbs move as they disappeared from sight with you. He could feel hands trying to pull him up.  
“Owen, Owen we need to go.” Claire, it was Claire next to him trying to pull him to his feet. He felt numb as he let her drag him along. Numb and sick. He didn’t want to get on that helicopter without you, he didn’t even know where they’d taken you. But you were alone, you didn’t know those people. What if you woke up and realized that he wasn’t there. The ache in his chest wasn’t worried about that. Owen tried to focus on any little thing to calm himself, you had always made him look at your hands, or his own if you weren’t there to serve as a focal point. Looking at his hands only made it worse, seeing them stained with your blood, lighter in the place where his hand had been holding on to yours. As he felt himself blacking out he wondered if this was what it had felt like for you.  
When he came to Owen was alone in a small room, laid out on what felt like the world’s worst makeshift cot. Trying the only door in the room and finding it unlocked, Owen stumbled his way down the hall. His mind felt in a haze, scrambling to let him function while still trying to put together everything that had happened. When he reached an open room he found Barry and Claire. They didn’t notice him until he managed to stumble against the wall. As they turned, the look on their faces upon realizing it was him standing there brought it all back. Owen slid down the wall as it came back to him in vivid and agonizingly painful detail. His chest felt like it was being split in half as he stared blindly at the wall across from him, not caring to hide the tears as they slid down his face. After long enough of him being unresponsive, Claire and Barry both gave up and left him to his own thoughts and misery. I’m gone anyway, he didn’t think this was how you meant but here he was and gone you were.


	2. I Found Myself Dreaming

Weeks it had been, weeks that weighed on Owen like years passing by. Your little scheming had done the trick, the recordings had been more than enough to keep the lawsuits at bay and get the public to believe that the park wasn’t at fault for the incident. There were plenty of others that could to what Henry Wu had, more than enough to help get the park back up and running once all the loose dinosaurs had been contained. But hey, the park had done everything it could to keep the people safe, at least as far as the public was concerned. As it turned out dinosaurs really were wow enough on their own.

When the dust settled and the mess was cleaned up it was almost like it was before, but not quite. The paddock felt emptier now. Charlie was gone, Owen kept waiting for her to come running through and knock in to one of her sisters but in his heart he knew that she never would. No amount of gratitude from anyone could change that. Fantastic, the day was saved, there had been few visitor casualties and he got to go back to working with his raptors with no looming threat of someone trying to weaponize them. But Charlie was still gone, not even enough left of her to bury. He couldn’t bring himself to let the lab hatch a replacement because really there was no replacement.

If losing Charlie wasn’t enough, whenever he wasn’t waiting for the baby of the pack to come running in he kept feeling like you were standing there, looming behind him and waiting for him to notice you. Whenever he turned around you were gone, never really there in the first place. He felt the ghost of your touch brush past his arm when he was on the catwalks, heard your laughter when he was in the office, swore he could feel the brush of your lips on his whenever he closed his eyes.

He spend the first week almost exclusively locked away in your bungalow. If he wasn’t getting the girls settled back in he was sitting at your table doing every piece of unfinished paperwork that he could find. He promised, he had promised you that he’d do all the paperwork and that’s what he was going to do. He was going to sit until every single thing was done exactly how you’d have wanted them done, until every last report was filed no matter how long it took him or how many concerned looks he got.

The only time he was in his own bungalow was to grab a change of clothes and avoid looking at his night stand at all costs. The first night back on the island he’d gone in to the false bottom he used to use to hide things he didn’t want you to find. He’d always been sure you knew about it but let him keep his little secrets. He’d fished out the small box, opening it only for a moment before slamming it down on night stand and stumbling outside, away from the oppressive air of a place that had once felt more like a home than anywhere else. Day after day the ring sat there, mocking him even when he couldn’t see it. Reminding him of all the time he wasted, the times he should have gotten down on his knees and begged you to marry him if that was what it took. Reminding him that he fucked everything up so badly that he’d made you give up on the two of you. Reminding him that if he hadn’t come up with that bull about you being better with containment stuff when really he’d just wanted a reason to spend time with you, if he hadn’t been so stupid…

Even if he burned the building down, right down to ashes, that god damn ring would still be there. One hideous reminder in the burnt out remains of his life. He couldn’t stand going in there anymore at all. What clothes he’d been cycling through was what he kept cycling through. He couldn’t look at his bed without seeing the place you always left your nightgown, couldn’t walk past the couch without thinking about all the night you spend curled up together talking about dreams that never came true.

It was just as bad in your place, sleeping in the bed that smelled less and less like you every day. He was losing the feeling of waking up with your hair in his face, the taste of your kiss in the morning. The bed had grown cold and lonely. When the paperwork was gone, nothing left to do like you would have done it, he started going through anything he could to keep you there with him. Boxes with pictures that he didn’t even remember you taking, notebooks full of entries that he wasn’t far enough gone to let himself read. You deserved so much better than this, than him. No number of nights falling in to a fitful sleep in your bed made the pain in his chest ease and nothing could ease the reminder of all the broken promises.

Most days it was all he could do not to throw himself in the pit and hope the girls took mercy on him and ate him. Most afternoons were spent in the offices wishing he could claw his heart out of his chest to make the pain stop. To get rid of the feeling so strong it shot down his arms before racing its way back up to remind him that he was never going to be rid of it. He’d broken just about every other promise he’d made to you, there wasn’t much stopping him from breaking the last one. Barry could handle the girls just fine. There was always something that stopped him, a harsh whisper of his name coming from the voice he knew wasn’t there or waking up with your disappointed face flashing in his mind when he drank too much the night before. But you weren’t there, how could you possibly understand how much that was killing him. You didn’t have to live with this fucking guilt, he did. He was the one that had to wake up every morning and have to live with this fucking feeling like the entire world was crushing down on his chest.

He was the one that spent every moment plagued by that moment that you’d opened your mouth to respond to him right before your eyes fluttered shut and you lost consciousness. He was the one screaming your name, begging you to open your eyes and look at him. He was the one crying out for you as they took you away from him. He was the one that had to be drug to the helicopter because he would have just stayed there. How dare you be disappointed in him when a bottle of tequila was the only thing that made those memories stop. He was still here, still trying to pick up his life, he wasn’t the one who gave up. You had no right to be disappointed in him.

He’d fucking done what you asked, helped saved the god damn place that took you from him. Everyone else was moving on but he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at the girls and not remember how much you loved them even though they’d always scared you half to death. Couldn’t go to his favorite restaurant without remembering the first time he took you there, couldn’t look at the rebuilt souvenir shop without seeing you leaning against the wall with blood running down your leg, without seeing you lying there with him leaning over you screaming for you to wake up. He couldn’t look at that stand without cursing himself for not realizing you’d been hurt. He’d replayed every possibility over in his head a thousand times, so many different things that could’ve saved you.

He knew what you would say if you were there. Don’t blame yourself Owen, this wasn’t your fault. It was my choice to go. That was all fine and well for you, but knowing what you’d have to say about his current state didn’t change a thing. He couldn’t flip a switch and stop feeling guilty just like he couldn’t flip one and have you sitting on your front porch laughing at something he said. He would’ve taken having you at the paddock screaming at him for breaking one of your protocols.

When Barry told him to find a way to get past the what ifs and all the things that could’ve happened but didn’t, Owen was pretty sure this wasn’t what he had in mind but it kept nagging at his every thought. Almost a year he’d held on to that engagement ring. All the months that had passed when he kept losing his nerve or coming up with a reason that the moment wasn’t just right. The months that passed after you left him that it sat useless in a drawer, making him question if waiting had been the right thing because the relationship had failed or if the relationship had failed because he waited. The weeks that it had laid on top of that night stand, nothing but cold metal and stones that would never sparkle on the finger it had been made for.

That morning he woke up, alone again in your bed. Instead of leaving straight away for the paddock he strode across the grass and trees that separated your place from his. He’d gotten as far as the front door before a call from Barry had him heading in anyways. After that mess he called it a half day and left to finish what he’d been trying to start that morning. The box sat just where he’d left it, weighing heavy in his hand when he lifted it. It wouldn’t make him forget you, forget any of this, but it would be one less reminder. He clenched the box in his hand as he walked around back, stopping at the water’s edge.

“Should’ve been with you anyway,” Owen muttered, turning the box over in his hands one last time before throwing it out and in to the water. It didn’t feel much like any sort of closure, he expected it to feel like he’d taken one more part of the two of you and thrown it away but it didn’t. In reality the ring had never been a part of both of you. It was meant to be something that linked the two of you but became something that reminded him of how much time he’d wasted and how much he’d taken for granted, like he could just take his time because you were always going to be there. Like waiting one more day couldn’t hurt anything until one day you were gone and all he was left with was something cold and hollow, something that used to be so bright and beautiful.

He had a simple plan for the rest of the day, starting with sleeping until hunger woke him up. He’d follow that up with dinner and then drinking until he passed the fuck back out for the night. He had to force himself to try and fall asleep in his own bed instead of going back to yours. The attempt failed, he lost track of how long he tossed and turned trying get some rest before he finally gave up but at least he tried it once before he shuffled back across the way. It still wasn’t easy to find sleep in your bed but he still managed it. When he woke up he felt rested but could tell without opening his eyes that he hadn’t slept long. It made him wonder what had woken him up until he felt an impossibly familiar weight shift against his chest. His first thought was that he’d really overdone the drinking this time and either he was having an incredibly realistic dream or he’d finally gotten his wish. He was leaning towards the latter, sure that he’d had one too many, maybe fell in to the water or slipped getting in to bed. That was the most logical, that something had happened and he was dead, finally reunited with you but he couldn’t bear to look down.

Perhaps it wasn’t a dream at all but a nightmare, he would open his eyes and look to his chest to find your bloodied body there. You would open your dead eyes to look at him, asking him why he hadn’t saved you. That’s all it was, a dream or a nightmare or just death. They’d sent your body back to your family, he had no claim to it he was nothing but your ex and the reason you were dead. He hadn’t even been able to force himself to call them, to apologize, hadn’t even tried to find out if they were going to have any sort of funeral for you. He couldn’t make himself see you like that, the reality was more gruesome but he couldn’t let the last time he saw you be old and unmoving in some fucking box.

The actual reality, when Owen could finally force himself to open his eyes and see what was causing the pressure on chest, was no blood and no white light. Nothing outwardly spectacular to anyone else, just a warm form taking slow even breaths. There was no blood, what flesh he could see was bright, not dulled by death and decay. A tentative touch revealed warmth and caused the body to shift again just enough that the head slid from his shoulder, revealing the face that he would’ve been so sure matched the rest. This was someone’s cruel idea of a dream, seeing you lying next to him, letting him feel your arm resting against his torso, making him see your peaceful face. He closed his eyes again as he felt your hand move, sliding up until it rested on the side of his face. It was too much for him, seeing you there, feeling your touch. He couldn’t take this much longer. If he really saw you again he’d apologize and swear that he tried the best he could to carry on without you but he just couldn’t stand this anymore.

It was such an odd feeling, you remembered the horrendous pain in your leg and the hard ground beneath you. You remembered Owen’s voice, screaming, begging you to open your eyes but you couldn’t. You had been so tired, so drained that keeping your eyes open as long as you had left you feeling like you’d been trying to scale a sheer cliff. You wanted so desperately to tell him it was okay but you couldn’t make your body do anything. This didn’t feel anything like that though, no cooler night air or hard concrete beneath you. You felt warm, whatever was beneath you was soft, well maybe not soft but much softer than the hard ground.

It was hard to force your eyes to open, like they’d been closed for too long. Everything felt dull, except for your leg that still felt like it was throbbing. You definitely weren’t home, it was too bright and stark for that, from the sound of it you weren’t even on the island at all. The place had been your home for years, you knew the sound of it, the smell of it, and this was not your home. This, was some hospital room, devoid of everyone but yourself, nothing but the sound of machines to keep you company. You felt so groggy, trying to look around probably looked more like your head flopping over than anything else.

Where was Owen? He had been with you surely he had to be here. He had to be here waiting for you to wake up, just like he’d been pleading with you to do. There wasn’t even any sign of a chair let alone that anyone had been doing any waiting in the room you were alone in. Your growing panic had the heart monitor going off and medical staff rushing in to your room. They all looked uncomfortably surprised to see that you were awake. Of course you were awake! They had to keep you from yanking away all the wires and tubes and whatever else they had attached to you. You tried to call out for Owen but it came out as nothing more than a rasp. How long had you been out?

“We need you to calm down before you hurt yourself. I understand that you’re probably very confused right now but if you keep pulling at everything and fighting us we’re going to have to sedate you and I’d rather avoid that.” The threat of sedation was enough to get you to stop fighting, you didn’t know how long you’d been asleep but you didn’t want to go back to that. You just wanted to know where you were and why you were alone.

You behaved while the checked you over, checking your vital signs and slowly disconnecting any machines that they felt were no longer necessary before they forced medication on you with the promise that it was to help with your leg. Slowly the excess staff began to trickle out of your room until it was just the doctor that had spoken before. You wanted to roll your eyes at their questions, of course you knew who you were, you may not know exactly what hospital you were in but you knew you were in some hospital somewhere.

“We just have to check, we weren’t sure if you were going to wake up at all but here you are awake and responsive. We told your boss as much when we contacted her, that we couldn’t guarantee you were going to wake up or how functional you’d be if you did.”

“Claire?” You croaked out. Claire, the park…had they saved the park? Where was she? Where was Owen? Someone had to know that you were alive.

“That’s her. She agreed to keep the situation to herself for the time being because you have to understand.” The doctor was trying to put it as delicately as they could, assuming that telling you was not going to be something you’d react well to. “There was some miscommunication initially and the responsible parties have been dealt with I assure you, but it was communicated that you had died. We only just got things sorted out a few days ago but we still weren’t sure if you could come back from the blood loss and everything else. She thought it was best to not get anyone’s hopes up in case you didn’t pull through.”

As it would turn out, Claire was expected to make an appearance to help get everything in order whether you woke up for not. It worked out that you did wake up before she came, thankfully long enough after you initially woke up that you had time to let what you’d been told sink in. Everyone thought you were dead. Owen thought that you were dead, he had no idea that at that moment you were lying in a hospital bed. The thought hurt you more than the pain in your leg, as far as he knew you had died. You had closed your eyes lying there with him and never opened them again and you knew he was going to blame himself, that he’d see it as his fault that you were dead because he should’ve taken better care of you.

“Hi,” Came a familiar voice from the doorway, breaking you from your own guilt at what this had to be putting Owen through. If someone had told you that you’d ever be happy to see Claire you would have laughed at them, repeatedly. Right now she was a familiar face in a place you just wanted to be free from. You wanted to go home, tell Owen that you were okay, tell everyone you were okay. Claire was expectedly in office wear and looking unexpectedly happy to see you, then again maybe it was just because you were awake and it was the creation that you and Owen had gotten roped in to assessing that wound you up here.

“Hey.” At least it was getting easier to get your mouth to do what you wanted it to. You still weren’t sure what to say, if there was something that you should say. “How’s the park?” Because that was the first thing someone fresh out of a coma worried about, if the park that almost killed them was doing okay.

“It’s a work in progress but we’re hopeful. There’s a lot to rebuild and a lot of things that needed changed but thanks to your files we avoided a lot of lawsuits and the public seems to have sided with the park.” So it had worked out like you hoped, better than you hoped really. You thought that best case the recordings would keep Claire and Owen from taking the fall for everyone else’s mistakes but you hoped for more. You knew that you never could have been satisfied with a job somewhere else but the idea of the park reopening seemed unrealistic given that you hadn’t thought Indominus would ever be stopped. Then there had been the fear that you weren’t even going to live to make it off the island let alone see if it could recover or just end up abandoned.

“Didn’t seem right to let good people take the fall for something they weren’t responsible for. Not after what they caused. They would have blamed Masrani for Indominus being created, blamed us for it escaping, blamed Owen for the girls.”

“We kept the part about the raptors pretty quiet, out of public knowledge. We didn’t want people thinking they needed to be put down.”

“They were just defending their pack.”

“That’s exactly what Owen had to say, he got them back in their paddock without much trouble. We didn’t even need to send ACU in to tranquilize them.” She didn’t miss the pained look on your face when she mentioned Owen.

“He has no idea does he?”

“No,” Claire admitted. “He’s been having a hard enough time, I didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell him yet. They said they weren’t sure if you would wake up at all or if you’d be okay if you did and it didn’t seem fair to get your hopes up. I was just hoping you pulled through so I didn’t have to tell him that you’d been in a coma but you died anyway.” You could understand that. Owen could probably get past not being immediately told that you were alive but he probably wouldn’t take it well if you’d have died and he was told that you’d been comatose for a while. He would have felt that he should have been there, that he should have had that choice to be with you.

“It’s better this way, that you didn’t get his hopes up. He’d have just dropped everything to come sit here. Just better for him this way.” You weren’t even sure that was true. You remembered panicking and worrying yourself sick when Echo had put Owen in the hospital once. You hadn’t been allowed to go and you spent the entire time blaming yourself for not having his back and any possible way it could have been your fault. You hadn’t relaxed until he was home and you could physically see that he was okay. Claire said herself that he was having a hard time, surely having him worrying about whether you’d ever wake up or even be okay if you did would have just made it worse. Maybe not as bad as finding out he was cheated of spending a few last moments with you but that wasn’t a problem you were being faced with. You could deal with however he reacted when you got out of this place and back to him.

“Do you want me to tell him when I get back?” It would be the same result as if you were still comatose and she told him you were alive. It was an appealing thought, letting her tell Owen and having him rush out wherever to be there with you but you knew that he had responsibilities. The girls needed him and you were sure Claire needed him at the best she could get him to help her get the park going again. Besides, if you got it your way you’d be out of here by the time he got to you anyway. You weren’t sure you really wanted the news to come from someone else anyway.

“No, I think he should hear it from me. I should be out of here soon anyway now that I’m awake.”

“About that. I spoke to your doctor before I came in and they said that your leg is still too damaged for them to let you leave just yet.” Way to ruin the day Claire.

“I’ve been here how long already and they’re making me stay longer?!”

“It’s been a few weeks, they feel that if they let you out now you could cause permanent damage to your leg and that you need more time for the muscles to heal.” A few weeks! You had been in here weeks, it had been weeks since you’d been hurt. You thought maybe a week at most by the way your leg still hurt but it had been weeks. Now you were hearing about risking muscle damage and all you wanted to hear was that you could go home. It had been the same argument years ago with Owen, you could have taken care of him at home but the hospital insisted he needed to stay and went as far as prohibiting contact because it was keeping him from focusing on healing.

“Just…just let me find a way to tell him, don’t let him do anything stupid or get himself hurt. I’ll listen to their stupid rules and be back good as new.” You hated the thought of it, but fighting the doctors wasn’t going to get you home any sooner. The responded better to you behaving and doing what you were asked.

“You’re planning on coming back?” She was surprised, you didn’t blame her. You were sure a lot of people would just try to work out a settlement and move on with their lives instead of going back to where they almost died but you weren’t most people. Isla Nublar was your home, you saw that now. You’d sworn during that ordeal you were going to quit and move on with your life somewhere else but you couldn’t. You wanted to go home, go back to the bungalows and the raptors and everything beautiful about that island.

“I’d like to yes. I’m sure it seems weird but that place is home for me. There are probably hundreds of places I could go work but it wouldn’t be the same. So if it’s all the same to you once they release me I’d like to come back."

“We’d be more than happy for you to come back.” Claire understood just fine. It really wouldn’t be the same doing the same or similar job somewhere else. You were invaluable to the park and she hoped you’d want to come back but by no means did she feel right asking it of you. She could only imagine how upset Owen would be with her if she were to have asked you to return. More than half the time she was sure the only reason Owen came back aside from the raptors, was that it was the only place he could still feel close to you. She would listen to your request and not tell Owen that you were alive even if it seemed a little cruel to let him keep suffering like he was. Hopefully you made a speedy recovery.

Claire didn’t stay much longer, let you know that your medical bills were being taken care of and left with the promise that when they hospital let you leave she’d come get you herself. It did turn out that your leg was worse off than you considered it, you had thought the major problem was blood loss since that was certainly what it seemed to be when your leg was wrapped in shirts. It was a deep wound regardless, healing but still having stitches to help it along. As it would also turn out you were in the same hospital Owen wound up in so even if you’d thought it would be a good idea to give him a call to tell him you were alive you couldn’t have. You’d have to wait and settle for showing him in the flesh.

Recovery was hell and a few more weeks of just wishing you were home. It took those weeks of begging the doctor to let you leave for them to finally concede once you could walk on your own with only general need for any sort of support. By the time Claire came to get you you’d been given a mountain of instructions and requirements for your leg, which you’d worry about later. You hadn’t ever been huge on dresses but loose clothing over the leg changed your wardrobe a bit and you weren’t going to complain when Claire was thoughtful enough to bring you something to wear that wasn’t hospital issue.

The trip back to the island was exhausting to say the least. Then came some basic paperwork for your return, which Claire assured you didn’t need completed right away. The ride home was the worst of it since the road wasn’t exactly smooth but the fatigue was worth it and you faked it well enough that you got Claire to just drop you off. You were disappointed that Owen was probably off to the paddock for the day but waiting for him just gave you time to take everything back in, enjoy the open space again.

"Owen?"

“This isn’t real,” He muttered, trying to pretend that it wasn’t your thumb he could feel stroking the edge of his jaw.

“Open your eyes and look at me then tell me I’m not real.” Owen shook his head, sure that he’d open his eyes and you wouldn’t be there, another figment of his imagination like whenever he was on the catwalks or in the office.

“I’m not falling for that again,” Owen rasped after he felt your lips press down against his.

“Does your imaginary me do this?” You questioned, grabbing hold of his hair and pulling. That was enough to get him to open his eyes. You were right, every time he’d imagined you it was just the faint memory of a kiss, a whisper of his name. You didn’t try and converse with him and you sure as hell didn’t pull his hair. “There we go, god I missed seeing those eyes.”

“You’re dead, they sent your body back to your family,” He mumbled in disbelief. He wouldn’t even be doubting this if he’d have ever bothered to call your family, not that they ever liked him in the first place.

“Can we talk straight for a minute and you try not to get really upset? Good.” You tried, pausing for a minute. “I didn’t die, obviously, or I wouldn’t be lying here with you right now. Someone, I don’t know who, messed up and said that I did but I was really just comatose for a bit. They didn’t get it sorted out until about the time I woke up, their first thing was to contact who they had as my employer so they got Claire. This is where I really need you to stay calm. She’s known that I’m alive for a bit but they weren’t sure what capacity I’d be in if I woke up and she didn’t want to get your hopes up just in case. Then I did wake up but I wasn’t in any shape to do anything so I had to wait until they decided I was okay enough to discharge and once I was I told Claire I wanted to come back here. Try not to be too mad at her, I wanted to tell you myself not have you hear it from someone else.”

Owen was quiet, not even sure how to process what you’d just said to him. This entire time he’d been in absolute hell over losing you, blaming himself and wishing that he’d have died along with you, you’d been alive. Not only had you been alive but Claire knew that, he didn’t even want to ask how long you yourself had been awake and able to tell him you were alive but didn’t. Part of him wanted to be absolutely livid that you and Claire had just left him to suffer. The rest of him was so completely overwhelmed and in disbelief that it was actually a living breathing you right here in front of him, hovering over him. His hand moved of its own accord, sliding up your arm until it rested on the back of your neck and pulled you in to him.

You didn’t expect his reaction. You expected yelling, Owen demanding to know why no one had bothered to tell him that you were okay. You had wanted to, god how you had wanted to but the doctors insisted that it was too much stress for you and made sure you didn’t even have a chance to get to a phone let alone call Owen and tell him anything. The first chance you got to leave you took, coming home to find Owen’s place smelling stagnant and covered in a layer of dust like no one had even been living in it while you could tell just by the way your bedding was that he’d been staying there instead. He had already gone off to the paddock by the time you’d arrived, insisting to Claire that you’d be fine by yourself.

You had noticed one other thing when you stopped in Owen’s place, the small box set on the night stand. The shape was easy enough to recognize and the thought that he had asked you to marry him crossed your mind as you opened it. The thought that maybe you shouldn’t put it on flashed in your mind but you did it anyway. You had passed out before you could answer him and perhaps this could serve as answer enough. You half wished you’d have gotten there before he left for the day, who knew how many hours it might be before he came home and your leg hurt far too much for a trip to the paddock. Rather than waiting around in your place or his you decided to go for a short walk to your favorite place to just sit and think, come up with what you were going to say to him, your leg could handle that much. When you heard Owen pull up in the distance a while later you opted to wait a bit longer before going back. You tried your place first when you finally went back and found Owen already asleep in your bed.

You weren’t tired yourself, after all the time you’d spent in a hospital bed sleep wasn’t as appealing but Owen was. You almost could have fallen asleep like that, lying on the side of your good leg and curled up against his chest. He didn’t stay asleep long, your eyes stayed closed as you felt his touch, your head sliding off his shoulder. When you opened your eyes and started moving your hand he closed his. You didn’t expect that he’d be so resistant and it hurt that he’d been having a bad enough time with this that he couldn’t even believe what was right in front of him. When you finally did get him to realize that you really were right there you got the affection you’d originally hoped for.

Even before everything that happened it had been so long since it had been like this, so long since he had kissed you or wrapped his arms around you. It was like none of it had ever happen, like you’d jumped back before the two of you ever started fighting. Perhaps not entirely, you could feel the urgency in how he kissed you, his fear in how tightly he held you. It was that kind of fear you both knew well enough before Indominus, being terrified you’d been on the brink of losing the other even if you walked away with no scratches. The kind of fear that left you grasping for each other and desperate for as much physical contact as you could manage to assure you that the other was okay. You held on to him for dear life because you missed him that much, because it had been so long. Owen held on to you to be sure that you were there, that you never left again. He paused only when he felt cool metal on his skin where your left hand was.

“I threw that in to the lake.” He whispered, moving an arm from around you to take your hand, as if you’d have just put some random ring on your finger and he needed to be sure. But it wasn’t some ring you had on, it was his ring. The ring he felt like he’d taken ages to pick out, that he demanded be absolutely perfect for you. It looked better on your finger than he’d ever imagined that it would, funny how this had all put things in perspective for him.

“I don’t know what you threw in the lake but it obviously wasn’t the ring since it’s on my finger.” You shifted against him, minding your leg that despite not being stitched shut anymore was still painful and stiff. You could feel his hand sliding up the sundress, resting over the scar, his thumb gently tracing its path. “You saved my life you know, I would’ve bled to death without you. I’m sure that doesn’t really make you feel better but just felt like you should hear that you’re definitely my hero.” He was silent, not even meeting your eyes. “I’m sorry I put you through all this.”

“I’ll forgive you on one condition.” Owen knew it was a lie, you probably did as well but he also knew that if he didn’t do this now it would just turn in to a massive guilt trip for you both.

“I already agree to marry you, what else is there?” You didn’t think he was mad, you’d seen Owen mad and he barely looked irritated that no one had told him about you. He just looked relieved and you didn’t blame him. You were relieved just to be home, to have familiar contact again instead of a bunch of doctors hovering around, the worst you’d had to face was waking up and realizing that you knew no one. You couldn’t imagine what these last weeks had been like for him, there were still nights that you’d woken up with his voice screaming your name, begging you to open your eyes and answer him. That had been the last thing you heard before you’d completely lost consciousness. You’d spent all this time counting down the time until you could see him again and he’d spent it thinking you were dead and buried.

“We never bring any of this up again.” Owen knew damn well if he tried to talk about it he’d feel like shit, that he hadn’t made sure you were really gone, that he hadn’t demanded to see your body, that he left you there to wake up alone. He’d feel like shit for not being there and you’d feel like shit because he’d spent all this time agonizing over losing you. It was just better that both of you move on and never mention any of it again. If he could pretend none of it ever happened he would but he knew it wasn’t possible. He would be reminded every time he looked at the pack, the missing piece that Charlie left and Echo reminding him why you’d bolted from safety in the first place. Every time he saw the scar on your leg he would remember.

“Then we probably ought to get this out of the way now,” You returned softly, pulling up the edge of your sundress until it rested at the top of your thigh, exposing the how much of the scar Owen’s hand didn’t cover. Owen shifted out from underneath you, sitting up to look at your leg. “Before you ask, yes it still hurts, the doctors said I’m lucky it wasn’t any deeper or I’d have bled out immediately but it was still deep enough that I’m stuck with crutches or a cane for a while. It did some pretty serious muscle damage but they all agreed when I insisted that you saved me.”

“The hell with luck,” He muttered as he ran his hand along the length of the mark. “It’s a miracle that you didn’t die.” Gripping on to his arm you pulled yourself up.

“It was stubbornness really, I wasn’t going to let some big stupid creation get the best of me. I told you I wouldn’t give up and I didn’t. Besides, how could I ever really leave you?”

“You’re staying?”

“Seems like it would defeat the point of saying I’ll marry you if I’m going to take off. How’re the girls?”

“Charlie’s gone, one of Hoskins’ men blew her up, the other three are doing alright. They weren’t real happy that I left them but they’re settled back in.” He saw the way your face fell when he told you what happened to Charlie. “You didn’t know about Charlie?”

“I had no idea, you couldn’t see anything from the cameras. One minute she was looking at you and the next minute the screen went black. I didn’t really have much time to wonder what happened, once InGen took off I went off to find you guys.”

“They still look for you every day.”

“Are they still being good about listening?”

“They try to be sometimes, but I think they’re still just confused, stuff changed and they don’t like it.”

“Well we can’t give them back Charlie, but maybe me being back will help? Put the pack back together and move on from there.”

"I don't know about them but it would sure as hell help me.” He couldn’t describe to you just how much you being there would help him. He left out that part of the problem with the girls was that it was hard to be their alpha again when his heart wasn’t in it, when it was torn away somewhere else he didn’t think it could come back from. At best he was too distracted most days, even when he could force himself to try and focus on the girls it had barely been enough. He needed his driving force back, his reason to show off and really push the girls through their paces.

“So you definitely want me back?” It was a stupid question, you knew that. At the same time you needed to know beyond any reason of a doubt that things were going to be okay between the two of you. You needed to know that Owen wanted you back at the paddock, he’d already shown well enough that he still wanted you in his life but you coming back to work was a bit different. You weren’t sure just how Owen really felt about you being back around the dinosaurs let alone ones who had indirectly almost caused your death.

“I think I made that pretty damn clear. Unless you’d really rather just stay here all day while I’m there.”

“Well, I do need to catch up on a mountain of paperwork,” You teased, though in the back of your mind you didn’t think Claire was going to let you off the hook for it just because you’d nearly died and spend the last how many weeks in the hospital.

“You don’t have anything to do but relax and let your leg heal the rest of the way. I told you I was going to do your paperwork.”

“You can’t even tell me that mountain of work I had before is done, let alone everything else I’ll end up with now that I’m back.”

“It’s been done for a while, and anything else you get you aren’t touching. We had a deal.”

“I also said we’d renegotiate later.” Had he really sat around doing all of your paperwork? That voice in your head said that of course he had. Owen didn’t go back on his word, even if it was something little. That voice also reminded you that maybe he needed something of you to try and keep him grounded, give him something to hold on to at least until he ran out of work.

“Last agreement was at least two weeks of paperwork, couldn’t be your personal slave since you weren’t here. The paperwork didn’t take me two weeks and I’m renegotiating now. You aren’t doing the paperwork.”

“That’s not renegotiating! I need something to do other than sit around, in case you forgot, letting my leg heal involves not being on it all the time. Let me have my paperwork and I’ll let you keep the slave condition. I know how excited you get when I let you wait on me hand and foot.” It might’ve been funnier if you were joking. You’d gotten sick once and Owen had not only carted you home from the paddock but insisted on playing nurse until you got better. You were too sick to care at that point and he was tickled that you were essentially rolling over and giving him his way.

“You’ll let me take care of you? No argument?”

“No argument as long as you don’t treat me like an invalid in public. Because just to be clear, I am capable of taking care of myself but in this instance I’m willing to let you do it.”

“I’d never make you look bad in public baby, you know that,” Owen responded, carefully pulling you on to his lap. “Now reminding everyone we work with how well I take care of my girl, well that’s another story.”

“I think the whole island knows that Owen. So we have a deal?” Of course you had a deal. Owen would take any chance he could to fawn over you and as few chances as he could to leave your side. You wanted to be irritated at his constant presence, normally you probably would have been. It wasn’t a normal circumstance though, even if you never spoke about it again neither of you had forgotten how close a call it had been. You didn’t want Owen out of your sight very long any more than he wanted you out of his. At some point you might stop clinging to each other but for the time being you were both entirely happy with things as they were. Happy enough in fact, that you were certainly considering loosening up your rules about Owen babying you. You’d really started enjoying the way he took care of you.

The girls, to your immediate surprise considering how they’d always behaved with you before the incident, had seemed largely thrilled to see you. You were thrilled to see them too though the absence of Charlie still sent a pang of pain through your heart. Maybe one day the choice would be made to hatch another raptor but for now it would just be the three of them, you, Owen and Barry who had made the choice to return as well. 

The girls seemed confused by your limp and by the devices they watched you use to help you get around. They knew that in the wild an injury like that meant death, meant that you couldn’t hunt and the pack couldn’t afford to have you as a liability. But they also knew this wasn’t the wild and as a human your injury didn’t mean you couldn’t fend for yourself. Even if it did you had Alpha looking after you. He was much happier now that you were back, not empty looking like he was before. They had tried to protect the pack, used Indominus to help them kill the men that were threatening you all even if Charlie died. Then they had to protect the pack from Indominus, protect you and the alpha and your other humans. They hadn’t understood why he came back without you after he left but they didn’t like it. He wasn’t like their alpha when he’d come back. But now you were back with your thing to help you walk and that shiny thing on your finger that seemed to make alpha especially happy when he saw it. Everyone was happy again and they were going to be much nicer to alpha’s mate.

By the time the park was officially opened again you were very thankfully off any form of help to walk. As it had been before, the raptors remained out of public viewing. There was no need to put them on display and neither you nor Owen would have allowed it if they tried. There would be no more experimental dinosaurs, no more prioritizing money and cost over the well-being of the animals and the visitors. It was back to how it needed to be, in part to another surprise that you’d found out about.

As it turned out, you weren’t the only one everyone thought was dead. They had found Simon Masrani surprisingly alive though badly injured. Lengthy recovery later and Simon was right back to his determination to return Jurassic World in to the place of wonder that it had long been. You had all learned very valuable lessons through the ordeal and didn’t intend to make the same mistakes twice. Simon was thrilled at everything that Claire had done in his absence, grateful to you for essentially saving the park with your forethought to save copies of InGen’s recordings. Despite nearly dying Simon was jovial as ever, as if the whole thing had never happened. 

“You know, I was starting to forget how great this feels,” You mused, resting your head on Owen’s chest as he wrapped his arms around you. This was home, lying in bed together with nothing between each other but skin. You were only half joking when you’d said you were starting to forget. You didn’t think you could really forget how good it was to be with Owen but it had been a long time, probably before the fighting started up. Even after you felt plenty healed Owen held out on you because he didn’t to risk it just yet. It was worth the wait, worth it just to lie there together without a worry in the world.

“I’ll just have to keep reminding you then,” Owen teased. He would have been all too happy to remind you that first day when he woke up with you next to him but he knew better. You’d have happily gone along with it regardless of how badly your leg still hurt and all he’d really wanted was for you to be okay again. He would take his time with you, give you time to heal and give both of you time to work through the problems from before that there hadn’t been time for. That was more important to him than anything else, fixing everything else before he worried about having his way with you and before the two of you really started planning any details of your wedding. It just seemed illogical to him to worry about wedding plans if there were still issues that had to be resolved.

“Well, you do know how forgetful I am,” You laughed back.

“Oh yeah, so forgetful.” You were probably the least forgetful person that he’d ever met, which might have something to do with why he tended to try avoiding arguments with you. You would honestly bring something up that he had said god only knows how long before. It was handy any time but when you were using it against him.

“Hey Owen?” You questioned, looking up at him.

“Yeah baby?” He responded, moving to meet your eye. He stared at you for a moment before leaning down to kiss you.

“Totally unfair,” You mumbled when he pulled away.

“What’s up?” He asked, grinning at you.

“I’ve been thinking about the whole wedding thing, now that we’ve decided we’re definitely going to have an actual wedding.” It hadn’t been much of a discussion, time constraints would need to be dealt with but neither of you wanted to skip out on having an actual wedding even if it wouldn’t have very many people in attendance. 

“This about your family?” Ah yes, your family. None of whom had ever been Owen’s biggest fan and you had a hard time seeing why. He was one of the best people you knew, he protected you and he took care of you and he treated you a hell of a lot better than some of the guys your sisters dated treated them. It wasn’t even like you’d been dating Owen before and he’d encouraged you to come work at the park so it wasn’t like he was encouraging you in to danger either. You met because you worked together but nothing could make your family like him. When you called them when you were feeling better to let them know what was going on and that you and Owen were going to get married they outright told you that they were absolutely not going to have any part of it.

It undeniably hurt that your family so unreasonably hated Owen that they wouldn’t even come to your wedding but that was their loss. You told Owen about it after the fact, ranted about them for a while before you started crying. Owen was more used to it than he wanted to be, it was far from the first time your family had said something to upset you but this time you swore it was going to be the last. You weren’t going to let them put a damper on your wedding, you weren’t going to keep calling them and letting them ruin your days. If they came to their senses fantastic but until then you were just fine with the family you’d found at the park.

“No. Actually I had an idea for where we should do it,” You responded, propping yourself up on your elbow.

“Little bit of an odd time but alright,” Owen returned, repositioning himself “You have my undivided attention.” Not as if there was anything better in the room to pay attention to but still.

“I was thinking maybe we can use the paddock.” If you hadn’t already had his attention that would have done it. With pretty much everyone you’d invite already on the island it made the most sense to get married on the island. You didn’t have anything against the ‘nice’ areas of the park but with the park reopened you really didn’t want to use any part of the resort and you just wanted something simple anyway. Small guest list left a lot of option but the raptor paddock had the most meaning for both of you and it let you involve the girls in even such a small way.

“I don’t see why not, can’t say I really wanted to get married in the park. We can get married there and have the party at home so the noise doesn’t bother the girls. You think about what I said about me taking you on an actual honeymoon?” Right, his honeymoon plans. As far as Owen was concerned you deserved a nice honeymoon that didn’t involve holing up in the bungalow for a week. You would have been just fine with that but he was being insistent and you did see the benefit in going somewhere that you couldn’t be interrupted.

“I have actually. If you’re really that determined to take me away I’m in. At least that way we’re guaranteed to have no surprise visitors and we aren’t tempted to stop by to see the girls. Just the two of us wherever you decide you’re taking me.” Let him have his surprises.

“We’re making some pretty good progress already.” Owen as thrilled with how smoothly things were going. He didn’t necessarily want a lengthy engagement but he wasn’t insisting on a brief one either. You on the other hand were all too excited to get planning out of the way. You’d been together long enough that you didn’t really want to have a long engagement too.

“I’m just ready to be married already, I don’t want to spend the next how many years trying to sort stuff out.”

“Years? You’re out of your mind if you think we’d be engaged for years babe. I made you wait around long enough.”

“Yeah you did, too busy being Alpha,” You teased, squealing when he rolled on top of you. “Owen!” Damn him and that thing he always did to your neck. “This is exactly why we can’t have neighbors,” You laughed softly.

Wedding plans continued to progress, including the headache of finding a reason to escape Owen long enough to decide on a dress, with Claire’s help. She was better at helping you try to shop online for one than you would have been alone, which also would have resulted in Owen either seeing what you were doing or distracting you from it entirely. It was hard enough finding a dress that suited your taste and was suitable for not only the weather but the venue, as you were discovering. Something too long and it would drag on the ground and end up filthy, you didn’t like the short dresses because if they wouldn’t show the scar when you were standing still they certainly would when you were dancing and you just didn’t really want that going on.

You were thankful that female bonding time was enough that Owen didn’t bother you. It took the entire day of looking through websites to find something that let you keep some tradition while adapting to the heat and not being so heavy that the weight of wearing it made your leg start aching. You’d avoided the shorter dresses but this one hit below the knee and the flow of the skirt meant that it wouldn’t expose too much of your leg while you were dancing. The sweetheart neckline and fitted bodice were sure to knock Owen off his feet and the simplicity of the dress gave you plenty of room to work with for everything else. You’d add a nice belt to liven it up and you had everything you could have wanted and to ice the cake it had pockets. Owen was going to tease you for that one but it saved you the trouble of finding a clutch to go with it.

With your family unwilling to have anything to do with the wedding and Owen’s family being long gone, it was an exceptionally small wedding. You asked Claire to act as your Maid of Honor, Barry did double duty to walk you down the makeshift aisle and act as Owen’s Best Man. The catwalks were sparsely decorated for the occasion, nothing too hard to tear down or dangerous to the girls if it happened to fall in. The girls themselves acted as mildly irritated flower girls that kept trying to eat the also non-toxic flowers from around each other’s neck. It was a less than conventional arrangement but it was perfect. Where else could have been right to marry the most important person in the world to you than the place that brought you together and the most important place in the world to you both. The girls could get over the flowers, you thought it was cute and you told them as much when you were down waiting in the safety cage for your cue.

Getting up the stairs and across the catwalk to Owen was quite possibly the longest trek of your life. It didn’t seem that long when you were working, but knowing what was waiting for you had you feeling like you couldn’t move fast enough. You were counting your blessings that you’d chosen nice sandals over heels for the occasion or you might never have made it up the stairs. You’d swear you stopped breathing when you reached the last step and finally got to see Owen. Of course he looked amazing, looked the embodiment of calm and collected, at least until he saw you.

After everything Owen had faced in his life, marrying you was a walk in the park. He was sure of his decision, hell he’d been sure this was what he wanted long before he ever got around to looking for a ring. He’d known from that stargazing when he looked down and found you staring up at him, he’d known since then that he wanted to spend his life with you, that there wouldn’t ever be anyone else that could make everything light up like you did. You’d both been through hell and back but here you were, minutes from promising yourselves to each other for the rest of your lives. He felt like his heart stopped when you came in to view. He was beyond words to describe how beautiful you looked to him. Beyond words to describe how god damn lucky he felt at that moment. Lucky that you were here at all, lucky to have you in his life, lucky that a woman like you had even agreed to marry him at all. You looked so wonderfully sure of yourself, nothing that outwardly said to anyone else that you chose a dress that length to hide the scar you were still self-conscious of, nothing to say to anyone else that it hurt you to not have your family there, but he knew. He also knew that you weren’t going to let any of that affect today and neither was he.

Owen wished he could have found the words to tell you how ecstatic he was at that moment, your hands in his, swearing your love to each other in front of those closest to you. That he could have described the way his heart had leapt when he’d felt the cool metal of the engagement ring against his skin, that way you’d just come right back to him as if he should have expected you there with his ring on your finger. You’d come back to him like nothing else mattered to you in the world but being with him and that meant more to him than anything else could have. You’d had every chance in the world to walk away from him, from all of this but you hadn’t thought twice about coming back and now here you were. He couldn’t tell you with his words but he could let you feel it.

You hadn't always imagined reaching a point in your life that you’d be standing in front of someone, ready to be theirs for the rest of your life. There had been times that you’d been sure that you would never find the one, never get married. Owen had changed that, even from your first day at the paddock he’d treated you with a respect that no one else had given you, looked out for you in a way that didn’t make you feel like he was patronizing you. He had made you feel like there was someone out there that could be what you needed them to be. There for you when you needed them, supportive but willing to back off when you needed them to. Someone that would go through hell and high water to make you happy, to protect you. You had been sure even when you swore you’d leave and never come back, that you could never actually do it. You tried to convince yourself then that it was because you cared too much about this place but you knew it was always Owen. You never could have walked away from him, not for all the money in the world, not for your family’s approval, not for anything.

As you stared in to his eyes, taking your vows you thought about how much the two of you had learned from each other, especially in the past year. How much you’d learned about yourself, reminding yourself that it was great to have a boyfriend that was what you needed him to be but that you had to be the girlfriend he needed you to be too. He’d taught you so much, helped you move past feeling like you needed other people’s approval especially when it meant you were making yourself miserable. He had taken one look at you and saw someone that cared about their job, about what they were doing, saw past you being a woman working at a dangerous paddock. You’d always appreciated that he gave you a chance when no one else wanted to, that he made you feel valued. He was your home, whether you spent the rest of your lives on this island or moved on somewhere else. Wherever you were with Owen was home, your safe place, the warm touch that made everything else melt away. There were some things that you just couldn’t put words to, you’d always felt like that was what kisses were for. Or the soft touches that gave away more than words could have. It was something special between two people when words just wouldn’t work. 

This was one of those times. Neither of you had the words for what this well and truly meant to you. That kiss was more than just the start of your marriage, the start of the rest of your lives together. It was the wordless response to what you knew the other needed, the I know to everything you wanted to say to each other but couldn’t. But some things just didn’t need words, some things just needed a look in the eyes and that familiar pressure on your lips. You felt the familiar assurance of Owen’s arms wrapping around your waist as yours looped around his neck and pulled him closer. It took some obnoxious cheering from Barry to remind both of you that you were still very much in front of other people. As you pulled away and rested your head on his shoulders you felt Owen press a light kiss to your temple. The only thing that probably saved you both from ending up a bit overly emotional was the sudden screech from Blue that in all honesty startled the hell out of you.

Blue was having none of her sisters’ attempts to steal away the flowers around her neck. She just wanted them to leave her alone so she could figure out what was going on and why everyone was dressed differently. Certainly something with Alpha and his mate but what she wasn’t sure what exactly but it looked important to them. The noise was enough to draw them down to the gate which was enough to have Blue coming over to the now opening gate. You didn’t look as wary of her as you used to, you looked happy to see her if anything. She was just happy to see her alpha happy even if he looked strange. She didn’t understand why humans were so complicated, wearing the same strange ornamentation on their fingers and putting on the strange coverings. What was so difficult about just having your mate?

“Oh no, we broke your rule about the gate!” Owen teased. You ignored him and focused on Blue like she seemed to want to focus on you.

“Keep it up and I’ll just take a vacation with Blue and leave you here,” You finally shot back, rubbing the side of her face.

“Look at you getting hands on with the girls,” Owen laughed softly, moving behind you to wrap his arms around you. That was a sight to behold, all the years you’d avoided getting too close to them and now you were standing there with Blue like it had always been like this. It was one less thing for Owen to worry about, all his girls getting along and the raptors not trying to bite you.

“They’re finally letting me, only took how many years.” Too many in your opinion, but better late than never. “They’re still the best, most beautiful girls on the entirely island.” Beautiful girls who apparently liked to gather around, forcing Owen to relinquish one of the arms around you to give Blue the attention she was demanding so you could pay attention to Echo and Delta.

“Pretty sure my wife holds that title, but the girls can tie for second.”

“You know I meant dinosaurs you huge sap,” You laughed, giving him a little nudge and earning a kiss in return. “You’re going to make them jealous you know.” Or just indignant that he’d stolen away your attention from them in the case of Delta and Echo who huffed and ran back in to the enclosure. Blue followed after them when Owen tried to take the flowers off her, which for whatever reason she was rather attached to.

There was time in between ditching the paddock and when you were expecting everyone for the reception. Time that to Owen’s mild disappointment you did not plan to spend messing up all the work you’d done to get ready. If just sitting by the edge of the water bothered him he didn’t say anything about it. Really he was just as content to sit here with you leaning back against his chest as he would have been doing anything else, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. Call it sappy but he loved any chance to just have his arms around you and relax.

“I remember the first time you brought me here, bragging about how your place was better because it was right next to the water and all I got was trees.”

“And you pushed me in the water and went to take a nap in your hammock. So I climbed in the hammock with you soaking wet. You caught a cold and I felt like an ass for weeks.”

“I let you too,” You laughed. “I pretended to be irritated every time you came over to check on me but I thought it was sweet that you kept trying to take care of me even though it wasn’t your fault I ended up with a cold. Almost made me quit working at the paddock.”

“You never told me that.”

“I decided that I really liked you, but I didn’t think that dating someone you work with could ever work out. Except nothing else sounded even a little bit as nice as staying and I didn’t really want to have to move. But I figured if it was supposed to happen it would find a way to work out. Now everything feels so perfect that it feels like it should be a dream. Like suddenly I’m going to wake up back in my old apartment and none of this ever happened.”

"Pretty much how I've been feeling since I woke up with you lying next to me. I keep waiting to wake up alone and you were never there. But I think it’s been a pretty long time for anything to just be a dream. Now you’re just stuck with me forever.”

“I can’t think of anyone else that I’d want to spend forever with than you Owen Grady, I’d hardly call it stuck.”

“Sure about that?” He laughed, tightening his grip on you and nipping at your neck.

“Very,” You laughed back, relaxing against him.

“Hey, time to get up,” You heard in your ear. “Went and fell asleep on me,” He laughed. It did seem darker than you remembered.

“Did I really?” You laughed softly as he pulled you to your feet.

“And you were worried about me messing up your dress. Come on, our friends are waiting for us.” Happy as Owen was to be celebrating the marriage with friends he was looking forward to the reception being done so he could whisk you away on the honeymoon he’d been planning since he got you to go for the idea. He hoped you weren’t expecting somewhere tropical because he’d chosen something that was less like home. In the meantime, Owen would enjoy dancing with his wife.

I found myself dreaming  
In silver and gold

“You look so amazing in that dress.”

“You look pretty damn smoking yourself, all dressed up for me.”

So I'll kiss you longer baby  
Any chance that I get  
I'll make the most of the minutes and love with no regrets

“I love you Owen Grady, more than I’ve ever loved anything.”

“And I love you Y/N Grady, more than I can ever say.”

Let's take our time  
To say what we want  
Use what we got  
Before it's all gone  
'Cause no, we're not promised tomorrow

So I'm gonna love you  
Like I'm gonna lose you  
I'm gonna hold you  
Like I'm saying goodbye wherever we're standing  
I won't take you for granted 'cause we'll never know when  
When we'll run out of time so I'm gonna love you  
Like I'm gonna lose you  
I'm gonna love you like I'm gonna lose you


End file.
